Qantas is making sure you don’t miss any of the cricket action while you fly

Qantas introduces in-flight wifi0:39

A sneak peek of Qantas engineers installing wifi hardware into a plane.

April 7th 2017

8 months ago

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Passengers now have the chance to watch all of the Australian cricket teams on the flight through Wi-Fi. Picture: QantasSource:Supplied

SUMMER means cricket, and hours and hours of soaking up the action on the telly.

And now you can do that from 30,000 feet in the air.

Qantas announced today it is teaming up with Cricket Australia to let passengers on domestic routes watch every live game of international cricket played in Australia — right from their plane seat, for free.

Qantas will live stream 75 matches of professional cricket played on Australian turf on domestic aircraft fitted with in-flight Wi-Fi.

That includes the Commonwealth Bank Women’s Ashes T20 matches, Magellan Men’s Ashes, the Gillette One Day Internationals and T20s, the KFC Big Bash League and Rebel WBBL — so even if you’re going on a holiday or business trip, you won’t miss a thing.

And from January, in addition to the live cricket, Qantas’ in-flight entertainment system will have a dedicated cricket channel produced by Cricket Australia Digital exclusively for Qantas loaded with content such as highlight reels of memorable Ashes moments and profiles of top English players.

“Qantas is proud to support the men’s and women’s teams through our Cricket Australia partnership, and as part of that we’re able to offer more than 400 hours of live cricket over the season to around 60,000 customers in-flight every week,” Qantas chief customer officer Olivia Wirth said in a statement.

“Our goal is to give our customers the best in-flight Wi-Fi experience in Australia.”

The airline has installed ViaSat’s next generation in-flight Wi-Fi service, which promises speeds up to 10 times faster than conventional on-board Wi-Fi by tapping into the NBN satellite network.

It’s as good as having the players on-board. Picture: QantasSource:Supplied

“We’ve partnered with the best in entertainment and we’re offering it for free,” Ms Wirth said.

Cricket Australia’s executive general manager of broadcasting and digital media Ben Amarfio said: “Our mantra of serving cricket fans wherever they are, is going to the next level with this fantastic initiative.

“This unique partnership allows us to deliver on that even when cricket fans are 30,000 feet in the air. Courtesy of Qantas, cricket fans won’t miss a ball of action.”

Following a trial earlier this year, Qantas has installed the next-generation hardware Wi-Fi hardware on 15 Boeing 737 aircraft so far, and will start installing the technology on its domestic Airbus 330s from early next year, with 80 Boeing 737s and Airbus 330s aircraft complete by

the end of 2018.

“The customer trial on our first Wi-Fi aircraft helped us finetune the system and we’re pleased to be switching the system on across the domestic fleet,” Ms Wirth said.

“When it is complete, 15 million passengers a year will be able to stay connected in the air.”